Negro Swan sonically is as fluid as it is fragmented, synthesizing and bounding between bedsit post-punk, desolate dream pop, chillwave-coated quiet storm, and low-profile hip-hop soul.

KEN mode are masters of their craft, and this is easily the equal of anything from the heyday of the genre on labels like AmRep and Hydra Head. While the more casual listener will find this heavy going, fans of the band, and of noise rock in general, are going to be stoked.

While the songs on Basic Volume explore similar sounds and themes as his previous work, they're sharper and more focused.

An album that coheres in a way other Ariana Grande albums don't, which means Sweetener is something of a double triumph: she's come through a tough time stronger and better than before.

The modulation and echo treatments on the vocals, combined with the frequently torpid tempos, nonetheless make Astroworld ideal for being pumped through an (18 and over) amusement park's sound system near closing time, when the challenge of hitting all the rides has started to turn into an overindulgent, overheated chore.

Exploring both their known, time-honored chemistry and new inspirations, the vibe that stretches across Songs You Make at Night feels positive and renewed. Always caught in a dream, this is one of the brighter and more hopeful dreamscapes in the Tunng catalog.

Lemon Twigs commit wholeheartedly to the bizarre narrative that Go to School is built on. Leaving no ridiculous tangent or exaggerated flourish unexplored, the result is a larger-than-life spectacle grown from strange but excellent songwriting.

Love Me/Love Me Not is a conceptual step forward for Honne and a compact journey through the highs and lows of love, instantly relatable to anyone who's ever experienced such a human journey.

Ohmme are clearly not adverse to inspired noise, but they know how to put it in a context where it doesn't grate so much as it adds zest, like a good pepper sauce, and on Parts they've made an album that's smart, sweet, and full of potent flavor.

Once the shock of the bigger, bolder sound fades, Chains Are Broken reveals itself as a perhaps inevitable maturation for the Devil Makes Three, one that broadens their horizons while retaining their vigor, humor, and heart.

Lightsleeper never quite coalesces. Instead, it drifts, floating from point to point, thought to thought, offering some memorable sounds along the way but never quite coming into focus.

For Interpol, embracing their veteran status doesn't mean a slide into complacency; if anything, it's the opposite. Marauder doesn't need to be qualified in terms of the band's former successes--on its own terms, it's one of the richest albums of Interpol's career.

With Deportation Blues, Brian Christinzio has created his own Big Star 3rd, less druggy but just as much a musical voyage through one man's psyche that travels through darkness while searching for some gleam of healing light. Let's hope he finds it before he makes his next album.

Performance may be lacking in progress, but the effortlessness of their experiments is still very much present, and nine albums in, White Denim remain as playful as ever. Overall, longtime fans of the band are likely to be satisfied, if not dazzled, by their latest effort.

Maintaining a healthy balance of sunshine and rain, Don't Look Away is the best example yet of Tucker's singular approach to music.

This is music made from a band that has been through the wringer and is happy to settle down and play, and there's an undeniable appeal to that open heart, particularly when it's camouflaged underneath such nominally heavy music.

Some of Still Corners' most intimate-sounding music, Slow Air's finest moments feel less like they're adopting the customs of a new land and more like they're adapting them to what they do best--capturing moods beautifully.

Physical provides ample proof that he can take the skills he's honed with that group [Factory Floor] in entertainingly different directions.

The Necks move incrementally forward in their quest for the musical unknown on Body; it displays all their creative strengths in a single typically engrossing work.

It's too bad more personal tragedy is what it took to right the ship, but Nothing's third album is a worthy successor to their great debut.

Berdan deals with organized religion and his personal conflict of identifying as a Catholic but being repulsed by the bigotry, repression, and hateful acts committed in the name of religion. It isn't quite clear if he comes to a resolution, or if that's even possible. Regardless, The Long Walk is some of Uniform's most challenging, disrupting work yet.

When Minaj leans into her untouchable strengths as a rapper, things get really exciting and an album of tracks as strong as "LLC" or "Barbie Dreams" would be one for the books. As it stands, however, Queen is another chapter of Minaj's good but largely meandering and inconsistent full-length album output.

While the emotions expressed on Coup de Grace often have a literate, philosophical complexity, the music crackles with a bright, youthful immediacy.

Combined with a higher level of musicality kept in check with a greater sense of nuance, The Nature of Imitation is Johnson's most accomplished and enjoyable album.

His voice shrouded in distortion, sometimes to the song's detriment, Powers' ability to go from vulnerable to feral in the blink of an eye keeps the listener on the edge of their seat, as does the occasional jarring shift from ambient vista to chemical grade electro-mayhem.

The Diet isn't a quantum leap over New Misery, but it certainly represents a step forward for Cullen Omori, both as a songwriter and a performer, and as long as his love life remains problematic, he should have a great future ahead of him.

Like any visual album, the floating sounds here are probably best experienced in conjunction with the visuals they were created for, but even on their own, there's a calm power that grows as the various passages of Tangerine Reef fade in and out of one another.

Smote Reverser is undeniably an Oh Sees record, with all 20 years of the band's history coming through every note played and sung, but it feels like a huge step into something new that's sure to be just as exciting and unpredictable.